Manuscripts of the Byzantine text

According to Wescott and Hort, for some time following the fourth century different types of text were current in the East, but at the end the Byzantine text "almost wholly displaced the rest." [1] The Byzantine text-type has by far the largest number of surviving manuscripts, especially from the invention of the minuscule (lower case) handwriting in the 9th century. For example, of 522 complete or nearly complete manuscripts of the General Epistles collated by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Münster, Germany, 372 of them attest the Byzantine reading in at least 90% of 98 test places. Amongst the earliest surviving manuscripts, the position is reversed. There are six manuscripts earlier than the 9th century which conform to the Byzantine text-type; of which the 5th century Codex Alexandrinus, (the oldest), is Byzantine only in the Gospels with the rest of the New Testament being Alexandrian. By comparison, the Alexandrian text-type is witnessed by nine surviving uncials earlier than the ninth century (including the Codex Alexandrinus outside the Gospels); and is also usually considered to be demonstrated in three earlier papyri. Modern critical editions of the New Testament tend to conform most often to Alexandrian witnesses — especially Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. The earliest of the Church Fathers to witness to a Byzantine text-type in their New Testament quotations is John Chrysostom (c. 349 — 407). The earliest translation to witness to a Greek base conforming to the Byzantine text is the Syriac Peshitta; usually dated to the 4th century.

The form of the Byzantine text found in the earliest witnesses varies considerably, and differs again from that which would predominate from the 9th century onwards; for example, no surviving Byzantine witness earlier than the eighth century includes the pericope adulterae (John 7:53 — 8:11). Amongst the bulk of later manuscripts however, it is generally possible to demonstrate a clear Byzantine majority reading for each variant; and a Greek New Testament text based on these majority readings — "The Majority Text" — has been produced by Zane C. Hodges and Arthur L. Farstad, although this text does not correspond to any one particular manuscript.

Characteristics of the Byzantine text

Compared to Alexandrian text-type manuscripts, the distinct Byzantine readings tend to show a greater tendency toward smooth and well-formed Greek, they display fewer instances of textual variation between parallel Synoptic Gospel passages, and they are less likely to present contradictory or "difficult" issues of exegesis.<ref>"The Syrian text has all the appearance of being a careful attempt to supersede the chaos of rival texts by a judicious selection from them all." Brooke Foss Westcott, Fenton John Anthony Hort. The New Testament In The Original Greek, 1925. p. 551</ref> For example, Mark 1:2 reads "As it is written in the prophets.." in the Byzantine text; whereas the same verse reads, "As it is written in Isaiah the prophet.." in all other early textual witnesses. Since the quotation introduced is partly from Malachi, the Byzantine form of the verse avoids the difficulty that might be adduced were it to be concluded that Mark was presenting a factual inaccuracy.

Many criticize the Byzantine Text because of its smoothness over and against the Alexandrian Text which is not nearly as smooth in its Greek renderings. These critics claim that the smoothness is proof of an editing process to refine the language.
These critics fail to account for other, more natural reasons for the smoothness in the Byzantine Text. One of these reasons is that the Byzantine Text reads smoother because it was transcribed by those who knew the Greek language.
There’s evidence that some Alexandrian manuscripts were copied by scribes who weren’t well learned in the source language, but rather copied syllable by syllable or letter by letter. For instance, P66 seems to have been produced by a scribe who didn’t know Greek because of the simple mistakes that any Greek reader would have detected. P75 has similar issues pointing to a non-Greek scribe.
This problem doesn't occur in Byzantium because they kept using the Greek language long after the Alexandrian and Western Church. The point being that Byzantium would have been better fit for having scribes who were well adept in the Greek language.
Consider that before 200 A.D. areas that spoke Latin stopped using Greek, though Byzantium kept the language alive. Aland speaks of this fact in - K. and B. Aland, The Text of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), pp. 52-53.
This smoothness is not only seen in the text itself, but also in the fact that the Byzantine Text as a whole became a more uniform text as it grew in predominance and was copied at greater frequency.
Generally speaking, as texts move further from their source in time and distance they become more and more divergent. How then could the manuscripts become more and more uniform as they moved past the 4th century, and the Byzantine Text-type began to take predominance? If it was not based on an early exemplar one would expect to find more divergence as time passed and as the regions that it was found in expanded. But we find quite the opposite. We actually find that, though time from the exemplars increased and the territories that it was found in spread, the text became more uniform. This gives us reason to expect an early exemplar(s) that the different regions began to go back to after the Church was settled from persecution.
Though the preservation of Scripture is “providential” and not “miraculous” in nature...none the less, it is a preservation that keeps the original language text “pure in all ages.”
We know from history that the Alexandrian Greek text was not promulgated after the Muslims took over that region.
Further, the Western Church did not promulgate the Greek text since Latin was its official language, and the Vulgate became its official version.
The Eastern Church was not affected by the Muslims until much later than the Alexandrian region, nor was its official language any other than Greek. Therefore, the Eastern Church was, in fact, the only Church that kept the Greek text preserved up until around the time of the Reformation.
This historical evidence shows us that it was only the Byzantium that kept the Greek text preserved in every age up until the Reformation since the other two regions neglected the Greek text in toto.

There are no consistent Byzantine witnesses amongst the early New Testament papyri. Nevertheless, instances of distinctive Byzantine readings are not unusual in the earliest texts — even though they otherwise conform more to other text-types or none. Hence, many (and possibly most) distinctive Byzantine readings are likely to be early in date. Two broad explanations have been offered for this observation:

that the Byzantine text-type transmits a text closest to the primary form of the New Testament books; whose early manuscript witnesses have not survived, as this text-type predominated in regions where the climate did not favour the preservation of papyrus;

that the Byzantine text represents a consistent exercise in textual compilation and correction from around the 4th century, the editors having eclectically selected those readings from a range of early manuscripts, that best conformed to their presupposed standards of the characteristics to be expected in the New Testament text.

In Mark 6:33 and Luke 24:53 the Byzantine text-type looks like a combination of the Alexandrian and the Western text. In other cases situation is more complicated. Mark 1:13 looks like a combination of the Alexandrian and the Caesarean text.

Origin of the Byzantine text

Among those who believe that the Byzantine text is only a secondary witness to the autograph, there is some debate concerning the origin of the Byzantine text and the reason for its widespread use. The suggestions that have been put forward are:

That Constantine I paid for the wide distribution of manuscripts which came from a common source. (There are several references in Eusebius of Caesarea to Constantine paying for manuscript production).

The Textus Receptus

The first printed edition of the Greek New Testament was completed by Erasmus and published by Johann Froben of Basel on March 1, 1516 (Novum Instrumentum omne). Due to the pressure of his publisher to bring their edition to market before the competing Complutensian Polyglot, Erasmus based his work on around a half-dozen manuscripts, all of which dated from the twelfth century or later; and only one of which was not of the Byzantine text-type. Six verses that were not witnessed in any of these sources, he back-translated from the Latin Vulgate, and he also introduced many readings from the Vulgate and Church Fathers. This text came to be known as the Textus Receptus or received text after being thus termed by Bonaventura Elzevir, an enterprising publisher from the Netherlands, in his 1633 edition of Erasmus' text. The New Testament of the King James Version of the Bible was translated from editions of what was to become the Textus Receptus. If the "Majority Text" of Hodges and Farstad is taken to be the standard for the Byzantine text-type, then The Textus Receptus differs from this in 1,838 Greek readings, of which 1,005 represent "translatable" differences.<ref> Michael D. Marlowe states:[1]yet it differs from the Received Text in about a thousand places, most of them being trivial. while Daniel B. Wallace[2]has counted 1,838 differences between it and the Textus Receptus.</ref>

Modern critical texts

Karl Lachmann (1850) was the first New Testament textual critic to produce an edition that broke with the Textus Receptus, relying mainly instead on manuscripts from the Alexandrian text-type. Although the majority of New Testament textual critics now favor a text that is Alexandrian in complexion, especially after the publication of Westcott and Hort's edition, there remain some proponents of the Byzantine text-type as the type of text most similar to the autographs. These critics include the editors of the Hodges and Farstad text (cited below), and the Robinson and Pierpoint text. Depending on which modern critical text is taken as an exemplar of the Alexandrian text-type, then this will differ from the Hodges and Farstad text in around 6,500 readings (Wallace 1989).

To give a feel for the difference between the Byzantine form of text and the Eclectic text, which is mainly Alexandrian in character, of 800 variation units in the Epistle of James collected by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research, the Byzantine and Eclectic texts are in agreement in 731 of the places (a rate of 92.3%). Many of the 69 disagreements involve differences in word order and other variants that do not appear as translatable differences in English versions. According to the preface to the New King James Version of the Bible, the Textus Receptus, the Alexandrian text-type and the Byzantine text-type are 85% identical (that is, of the variations that occur in any manuscript, only 15% actually differ between these three).

The Byzantine type is also found in modern Greek Orthodox editions. A new scholarly edition of the Byzantine Text of John's gospel, (funded by the United Bible Societies in response to a request from Eastern Orthodox Scholars), was begun in Birmingham, UK. and in 2007, as a result of these efforts, The Gospel According to John in the Byzantine Tradition was issued.

Another examples of Byzantine readings were found in p66 in John 1:32; 3:24; 4:14.51; 5:8; 6:10.57; 7:3.39; 8:41.51.55; 9:23; 10:38; 12:36; 14:17. It means some of the roots of the Byzantine text go back to a very early date, but it does not mean thery were occur in the original text.<ref>Bruce M. Metzger, Chapters in the History of New Testament Textual Criticism, Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 1963, p. 38.</ref> Some authors, not scholars, interpreted it even as rehabilitation of Textus Receptus.<ref>E. F. Hills, Dean Burgon in the Light of Recent Research; D. A. Waite, Defending the King James Bible, Bible For Today, Collingswood, New Jersey 2004. </ref>

B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary On The Greek New Testament: A Companion Volume To The United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament, 1994, United Bible Societies, London & New York, pp. 7*-9*, 15*-16*.